


Quality Reading Time

by rhien



Series: Rainbow Book Exchange Ficlets [2]
Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Birthday, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Oops, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, probably anachronistic internet dialect and memes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 11:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhien/pseuds/rhien
Summary: Levi's birthday was terrific.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A ficlet for _Fangirl,_ in the Rainbow Book Exchange 2016-17. 
> 
> This is set in roughly April 2012, sometime soon after chapter 31, but probably before 33.

Levi’s birthday was terrific. All day, he gave everyone he met collaged cards made out of weird junk mail and old campus flyers. (“secret penguin CONTEST, _take back the_ **sketch comedy** ” or “VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY your on-campus lgbtqa+ _french horn recital,”_ just for example. On the back he’d written, “Many happy returns of the day.”) He couldn’t afford gifts for everyone, but this was his gesture at celebrating like a hobbit. He’d been working on them for a couple of months, keeping his hands busy while he listened to lecture recordings. “It’s this or knitting,” he’d told his housemate Micah one day back before Christmas, as he cleared off the kitchen table. “And how many scarves do we really need around here?”

Micah had laughed. “I like how the only two possible choices are yarn related or _this_.” He gestured expansively to the scatter of curling paper bits and smears of glue stick.

“Also I don’t know how to knit,” Levi had said, shaking his head mournfully.

This morning, Micah and Tommy and Ed and Amit all surprised him with birthday pancakes and only slightly overdone bacon. Then Micah had presented him with a book titled [The Manly Art of Knitting](http://rhienfic.tumblr.com/post/159240578702/manly-art-of-knitting) with a cowboy on the cover and a note that said, “it u,” and he’d threatened them all with socks and horse blankets next year. (Actually… he wondered if he could make Watford scarves for Cath, and maybe Wren.)

Reagan’s card read: “ACT NOW for _the purple_ -EST **of dreams,** one night only.” He met up with her for lunch; she brought him lasagna fritta and stuffed mushrooms from work. Then she pulled out a whole roll of quarters and trash-talked him while they played at least ten games on the random Star Wars-themed pinball machine squeezed into the random corner down by the student mailboxes.

He felt like he’d been beaming all day.

In the mail, he found that his great-aunt Hazel had sent him a gently used smartphone, with the caveat that he would have to pay for his own phone service after the first year.

“Or you could give me phone service for my birthday, next year,” he teased her, during the thank-you call. “And the next, and the next…”

“All my gift decisions, solved forever,” she said dryly, and he laughed. “But you’d miss the traditional toffee and divinity, I think.”

“Yeah I would,” he said, fervently. “Scratch that idea. Do you need a new candy thermometer yet?”

The phone was pretty great, though he’d lived without one this long. He’d probably have to be careful not to let it distract him too much (Reagan said the key was to say NO to notifications whenever you installed anything). But it did look like it would make it more convenient to stay off the computer, which was a plus. And the camera was a lot better than on his old phone.

Finally he got to stop by Pound Hall. He had a little time before work to see Cath, and give her the card he’d saved for her: “ _favorite_ MAGICAL **cinnamon roll**.”

She turned the card, squinting, her mouth quirking. “How abstract. It looks kinda like a ransom note.”

He laughed, sitting on the end of her bed, and scooted till he was leaning against the wall. “Yeah. I hope ransom pays well, all that cutting and pasting gets tedious after a while.”

She nodded absently, peering at the screen and tapping a few keys. Before he could say anything else, she said, “I was, um. Trying to write you a fic.”

He sat forward. “Really?”

“Yeah, but…” She scowled at the screen. “I guess all the reading and the papers and the Carry On and everything… it’s been giving me some trouble. I don’t have it ready.”

“It’s all right. I’ll still like it next week, or whenever.”

“I know, but _today_ is your birthday, not next week.”

“Hmm. I have a solution.” She looked over. “This gift fic includes Quality Reading Time, right?”

(They’d started calling it that two weeks ago, in comically official tones, when Cath had read him another, shorter fanfiction of hers. Sometimes, now, Quality Reading Time morphed into other “quality time,” but Levi definitely loved the reading part, too. He’d always loved to hear words, out loud; to close his eyes and let them wash over his mind, build pictures in his head. His housemate Tommy said that listening to people read put him to sleep, every time, whether he wanted it to or not. But it didn’t make Levi sleepy—it made his brain feel more awake, made his chest feel a little fizzy. And Cath’s voice was already one of his preferred sounds.)

“Right.”

He pressed. “Complete with Accompanying Cuddle Time?”

Cath half-grinned down at her keyboard. “Of course.”

“Well.” He patted the bed next to him. “I could accept the second half right now.”

“And then _again_ when it _is_ ready, I suppose.”

“Hey, consequences. I don’t make the late-fanfiction rules.”

She laughed and got up from her chair. But before she snuggled in to his side (all of her own accord! It wasn’t actually incredible, it just _felt_ like it, still, after everything), she dug in her bottom drawer and brought over a smallish box, wrapped, with a ribbon and everything.

“I got you this, too.”

“What! And here you made it sound like you weren’t prepared.”

She shrugged as he tore the paper. “I didn’t know if you’d really want a fic, and I don’t know if you’d really want this either, but—”

“Cather.” Levi stared into the box.

“Yes?”

“Cather. Is this an _alpaca?_ ”

“Just a little plush one. Though I do hear they’re the world’s most adorable llamas.”

It was just bigger than his hand, brown and so _soft_ , and it was wearing a tiny green cape. “He’s _amazing_.” Most of all, he couldn’t believe she had _remembered_ that… it was practically decades ago (in freshman time, in school year time, period), and his chest felt so stuffed full of light he almost couldn’t talk for a moment. He drew her close and tried to squeeze a little of that light feeling into her. “Thank you,” he muttered into the top of her head.

“Happy birthday, Levi,” she whispered into his chest. “I’m really glad you were born.”

He laughed a little. “God, me too.” She was so warm, and soft, and her hair smelled a little like coconut conditioner. He didn’t think he was audibly humming with contentment, but who cared, really.

“Good day?”

“Definitely good,” he smiled. “Oh, and look what my great-aunt sent. Maybe Simon can teach me how to use it.” Levi shifted, awkwardly, trying to maneuver his new phone out of his hip pocket.

“Simon?”

Levi walked the toy up her arm while he wrestled with his pocket with his other hand. “He’s got to earn his keep, you know. And he has a cape.”

“Simon!?”

Levi nodded solemnly. “He’s no hamster, and hopefully he’s not ill-fated, but I’m calling him Simon, anyway.”

Cath’s forehead dropped against his arm, and her voice brimmed with laughter. “Alpaca AU.”

When he showed the new phone to Cather, her face lit up and she snatched it away from him. She poked around on it for a minute, installing something, logging in to something.

“There, perfect,” she said, thrusting it back at him. “You can borrow my account.”

“Your account for what?”

“It’s my audiobook service subscription,” she said, staring at their feet. “I know it’s too late for _The Outsiders_ , or your YA lit class—”

He tightened his arm around her shoulders. As if he would trade anything for that night.

“But… I mean, book 8 comes out in just a couple of months and I, I thought you might want to read the books.”

“Listen to them,” he corrected, feeling a pang.

Cath gestured dismissively. “Same difference. Okay, it’s not exactly the same, like, _experience,_ but… But Euan Morton is the narrator and he’s great, he does great voices for all the characters, you should hear Baz, he’s so posh and snooty and perfect—”

Levi loved it, _loved_ it, when Cath got excited enough that she started rambling. He also knew that if he let her go on too long she’d realize it, and get self-conscious and embarrassed about it, so he cut in, with not-quite-mock surprise, “You’ve listened to them, too?”

“Of course.” She rolled her eyes; it was somehow very Reagan-esque and it made him want to laugh with delight. “We used to listen to them on road trips to see our aunt in Chicago, sometimes.”

“Oh? Just then?”

She sighed, but she didn’t seem actually annoyed. “And at night, sometimes, to get to sleep.”

He couldn’t stop grinning. “Oh, really.”

Faux-unwilling, she said, “I have the digital version and I have them on CD, too. I would’ve just lent you those but they’re at home.”

He couldn’t not picture the _stack_ of CD boxes, like another piece of decor in her wildly World of Mages themed room at home. “Man, imagine… just how many discs _are_ there?”

“I know you have a lot of lectures to listen to and all, but I thought if you wanted…”

“I do.” Again, he felt a pang, and he fiddled a little with alpaca!Simon’s nose. “I mean, I really do, Cather. I’m just… I don’t know.” Maybe he shouldn’t commit. He didn’t even know how many hours of listening they would all be. With no Ag Finance class this semester, he did have some extra time... But still.

“I mean, I _have_ seen the movies.” He said it partly just to see her nose get that wrinkle, the one where she was torn between sniping about the inaccuracies, and gushing (in a Cath sort of way) about the important character choices they made, and how they contrasted with the ones in the books.... (Come to think of it, if he actually listened to the books he could probably follow that whole rant a little better, which would be fun.)

Levi liked the movies. He was, in some ways, glad that he’d seen them first because he knew movies always left out a lot and it was easier to enjoy what was there if you weren’t comparing it to what it was missing. But he was excited at the idea of getting the whole story, all the details. He’d sort of listened in when his dad had been reading the first two to his younger sisters, but he’d also been fourteen, and busy struggling with homework, and feeling like he was too old to be read to anymore, so he hadn’t really caught everything.

But he didn’t know how long they were. (Long, obviously. He’d heard book six was a killer.) He’d rather read them with Cath, like they’d talked about reading the eighth book together when it came out. But they were long. He had work, studying, she had classes… they couldn’t spend every spare minute they got together reading aloud. Now that he’d finally gotten her up to his room… yeah, they had other things to do.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I just don’t know if I can whip through them as fast as you.”

“It’s okay if you don’t have time,” Cath said, shrugging, but he didn’t want her to pretend that it didn’t matter to her when he knew it did.

(Levi knew, he knew, that this wasn’t a test. Cath was different than… and she wasn’t going to get _bored_ with him, for god’s sake, and anyway, he _did_ want to listen to them, he was interested. He just didn’t want to disappoint her if he couldn’t finish.)

He didn’t want to say any of that, so he said, “I want to! I’m just.” Now he shrugged. “You know I’m not a real nerd. I haven’t read enough for that, and—”

Cath sat up a little, leaned away—the opposite of any kind of goal Levi might dream of having. “Levi, you’ve read tons of books.”

“Listened to,” he said again, automatically.

“It counts.”

“Well. I mean, it does, but it doesn’t.”

She looked straight into his eyes. (Eye contact! He knew, by now, even now, this was kind of a big deal.) “It. Counts.” She looked very… considering. “It’s all the same words, right?”

He couldn’t argue with that.

“And your memory is amazing.”

Levi shrugged. When he was into a story, the combinations of words just stuck in his brain. They always had, it wasn’t a special skill he’d worked hard at or anything. They’d always done a lot of quoting of movie lines around his house, growing up.

“It _counts_. We might not be exactly the same kind of nerd but… Levi, I _know_ stories are important to you.”

He stopped, his brain stuttering for just a moment. When she put it that way… when he set aside the years of frustration and tutoring and tricks, and just thought about sitting on his dad’s lap as a kid, gasping over _what’s going to happen next…_ “Oh,” he said. “Well, sure. Everything’s a story, right?”

She didn’t say it, but her face was shining, practically shouting EXACTLY. “It really is.” Suddenly she grinned. “And remind me to introduce you to podfics sometime.”

“Okay.”

She tucked herself back under his arm, fitting in warm and close along his side, and he closed his eyes and kept himself from exhaling shakily. “Of course I’d love for you to read them—listen to them,” she said, quietly. “But it’s up to you. It’s fine. If summer is better, that’s fine. They’ll still be there, any time. That’s the best thing about books. They’re not going anywhere.”

“Okay.” He hesitated, then asked, “What about when book 8 comes out?”

“Well, they release the audiobook at the same time, I already have it on pre-order.”

“No, I mean…. I’ll see how many I can get through, on audio. As long as we read book 8 together. That's—that’s still the plan, right?”

Cather looked at him and smiled. “Of course it is.” She leaned into him again (best gift all day). “Quality Reading Time.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> All thanks, as ever, to my patient and nigh-implausibly supportive beta squad: [steadfastasthouart](http://archiveofourown.org/users/steadfastasthouart/pseuds/steadfastasthouart), [knightinbrightfeathers](http://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinbrightfeathers/pseuds/knightinbrightfeathers), [RainyForecast](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyForecast/pseuds/RainyForecast), [plotting](http://archiveofourown.org/users/plotting/pseuds/plotting), and especially [Nocturnal_Elle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocturnal_Elle/pseuds/Nocturnal_Elle) for title-related things.


End file.
